FSX Gmax Crashes from Material Library

[lionheart]

Hey all,

For three days now, I have been trying to get my FS9 model into FSX Gmax to convert it to FSX format. Each time I brought the model in, it would crash when I clicked on the 'Material Library' icon, which caused the file to also become corrupt (scene file) which FSX Gmax could then not open. The file could still be opened by FS9 Gmax, but not the FSX version, leaving the file locked.

The model I have been making, the Aerospool Dynamic, uses a new Unlimited Export system which means, I could make a super dense, massive polygon count aircraft model for FS9, which also meant I had a ton of materials in this. With this problem of one of the materials causing the FSX Gmax to crash, and no idea on how to find it, I was looking at attaching all the parts of the model with a basic color material, then merging it into a new scene, erasing all the other materials, then reattaching materials to them, fresh, that were FSX format.

[STRATEGY]

My plan was to use a former, past airplane file with existing FSX materials to 'transfer' in the scene' onto the new model, with simply replacing the textures to the FSX Material slots, (psd and jpg and bmp textures, leaving the materials alone that are already setup for FSX).

By doing this with all the zillions of parts of the Dynamic, it could have easily added 2 weeks to the endeavor of finding the right textures and materials to match with the blank parts, so finding the 'corrupt texture' was important.

[LOCATING THE CORRUPT TEXTURE]

The only way I could figure to find the odd material was to import a part, one at a time, each with different, new materials applied to them, from the FS9 scene, into a preset expendable test FSX scene. With there being perhaps 30 to 40 materials, this could take a couple of days. I was praying for a way to get around this and it came to me in prayer, to try exporting only parts with 'suspicious' looking Materials. That sounded good, and I jumped up and began doing just that.

On about part 6 or 7, I came accross a material that said Missing Material in brackets. It had two parts on it. Under the Material in the Material Editor, it stated 'This Class does not have an implemantation supplied by any of the currently loaded DLL's'. This was an eye opener. I noted which part it was in FS9 Gmax, Alt-Tabbed over to the also running FSX Gmax, Merged that part into the test scene, hit the Material Library icon and sure enough, FSX Gmax crashed.

The offending or corrupt material ran fine in FS9 Gmax and exported properly. But in FSX Gmax, it triggered crashes and corrupted the file once you tapped that Library key.

So, if you should get a similar 'crash' when in FSX Gmax and you can get into the file from a former past save, go in and check the Material Library for oddball materials, like a Missing Texture. That should be the culprit.

I took a screenshot of the oddity from in FS9 Gmax to show you what my corrupt Material looked like. Note, on mine, I had just assigned a new 'working' material to the two parts that 'were' assigned to the bad material, so you will see it has no parts assigned. Now that means that if you take away the objects from the bad material, then import the scene via Merge, then the material should 'not' come over with the parts, as that is about the only way to bring in materials from other scenes is via parts that have the Materials attached to them. For safety sake, just delete the bad material....

Hope this helps out people that run into this wall.... Horrible...




Bill